


Pivot

by Discord1



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, F/M, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Movie: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28159404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Discord1/pseuds/Discord1
Summary: What if Finn, Han and Chewie hadn't raced to Illum to rescue Rey from Starkiller Base?  What if she'd been found and recaptured before she could escape? Takes place mid-Force Awakens and abandons canon in a swerving departure that never looks back.  Reylo.  The slowest of burns.  Embers really, if you squint.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	1. Found You

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just getting into the Star Wars fandom, but already prefer writing Ben over Kylo. Couldn't get this idea out of my head though. It's probably already been done a hundred times, so apologies if its pedestrian and unoriginal. Chapters will be drabbles (installments of less than 1,000 words) and hopefully updated weekly on FF.net. Reviews are much appreciated!
> 
> BTW - I post pretty exclusively to FF.net. Always check my stories out there for latest edits and newest chapters.

From within his helmet's cage, Kylo Ren closed his eyes, calling to the Force around him, gathering it up like a second cloak. Its warm whispers had long ago quieted – it was cold and listless, resigned to its repurposing – and he hunted for impressions of the scavenger in his culled harvest.

_She's been here_ , he realized, scanning the exposed planetary rock and chromed corners of Starkiller Base with new interest. Excitement ignited, mingling with his ever-simmering wrath, and his mouth twitched into a cruel smile. Seeing a resurgence of the fear she'd first born in the interrogation room when she was inevitably caught was cause for relish. _She's close._

The lure of Skywalker, a target for so many years, paled in comparison to finding the dirty, rag-swaddled girl. She'd been mentioned like a coming storm, an awakening that cleaved into his core. Kylo had assumed she was merely an obstacle – easily hurdled and left behind – but their first meeting in Takodana's forest had proven him wrong. She'd been smaller, more terrified and defiant, fighting against his Force hold with gritted tenacity, than he could've imagined. 

Kylo had stolen her name from behind her fatuously expressive eyes, and it was as uninspired and forgettable as she.

_Rey._

Hardly into adulthood, she was somehow strong enough in the Force to have pushed back into his mind under her manacled restraints, plucking information before he could sever the connection he'd made. She had no training. No pedigree. Such a feat should have been impossible.

_She needs a teacher._

Kylo stalked down a corridor, rounding a bend with strides that lengthened in anticipation. Such tedious chase usually roused only anger – unbridled and splayed everywhere at the prospect of having to be methodical. Patient. But this time, a hummed sort of thrill lanced him. He honored his quarry with such notice, though he doubted she'd be pleased. Unaware the status was garnered by none.

One of Hux's troopers approached at a near-run, and Kylo savored the trepidation the man tried to fight quaking his gleaming armor. The girl's fear was more sublime, but this would do for now.

"Yes?" He clipped out. The voice modulator of his mask made every uttered word thick with menace and never failed to gratify.

"We've searched through the lower levels, sir," the trooper managed to sound steady. Sure. "All clear."

He, like so many others, never knew the inner workings the Force imparted without permission.

"Keep looking," Kylo ordered. "She's just beginning to test her powers."

The man nodded and rushed off, his relief a tangible tang in the air.

A loud echo shook the ebbs around him, and Kylo swiveled on his heel, veering toward it. The girl was a crystalline shock in the Force, so clear and vibrant it flooded him with jealously. How could she possess such clarity, blazing a blinding trail, when she was nothing but a desert junk-rat? Her presence was growing brighter – it felt like she was in the next room – and he sensed her movements easily now. She was down in the bowels of the base, scurrying furtively among its thermal oscillators.

_What are you up to, scavenger?_

\--

Rey's hammering heart thundered in her ears as she planted another of the charges she'd stumbled upon in her flight through the Order stronghold. Somehow, she'd known _exactly_ where the explosives had been housed, and where they'd do the most damage. The certainty was unwavering, like relayed intel at a Resistance mission briefing, and she was too tired, clinging to her bleeding adrenaline, to care why.

The stormtrooper rifle she'd taken from her coerced guard was heavy over her back, an unfamiliar weight that was making her taxed muscles ache. Her thoughts strayed to Takodana, and she wondered if her new friends had survived the Order's attack. The closest facsimile to family she'd ever experienced – were they to be ripped away already?

_Focus_ , she admonished silently. _Think later._

Her hands moved on automatic, activating the charge. Stepping back, her feet stuttered against the beveled lip of a shadowed gangplank, bathed in emergency red lighting. A terrible dread rose in her, murmurs of tragedy threatening to encumber far more than the blaster rifle, and she shied away from the railed walkway.

Thudding boots sounded overhead, and Rey spun as they stopped, looking up.

The monster had found her. Kylo Ren. He stood on a metal-plated deck above, canting his head as he stared down. Appraising. Measuring. The tilt of his neck eased. 

Finding her lacking.

"No one is coming for you," he called, making no move toward the laddered stairs at the platform's edge. "But that's nothing new, is it?" Beneath his tone's impassive calm, she could hear derision. "You were abandoned on Jakku long before I brought you here."

"Quiet," Rey snapped, trying to resist the coil of anger unwinding within. "Stealing memories doesn't grant you insight. You know nothing about me."

Kylo palmed the deck's rail and vaulted over it in a billow of robes, ignoring the ladder entirely. He landed before her without any jarred impact, as if aided by invisible wires, and straightened in unhurried ease. She posed no threat. She was cornered prey.

Rey felt probing fingers reach into her mind, though the man's arms remained at his sides, and she shook them off with a staggered step backward. She couldn't let him see images of the explosives. She'd blow them both away first.

"I know all there is to know," he said. "You're a piece of discarded dune-trash. A disposable pawn in the Resistance's grasping, futile schemes."

Rey clenched the detonator she held into a throttle, lifting it slowly until it was in view.

"Then my part in the game ends now," she whispered, pressing its button.


	2. Running Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Antholin strikes again, offering advice on these early chapters. He talked me into changing a few things, so hopefully they flow okay. Thanks, Favorite One.

Kylo Ren was loathe to admit his mistakes, but he had vastly underestimated the girl trembling in barely-checked ire before him. As she'd raised her arm, revealing a detonator clutched in her white-knuckled grip, his miscalculation sharpened into acute focus.

_NO!_

Her thumb clicked the device's head without pretense or hesitation, another of his mother's brainwashed fools, and the world erupted in a clamorous roar of blaring light and sound. Kylo reacted immediately – though which instinct influenced him would forever remain unclear – surging forward and slapping the now-inert apparatus from her hand. Shockwaves of simultaneous explosions barreled into them, and he grabbed her roughly by the waist, divesting her of the rifle in a wrenched pull and leaping back for the platform. The girl shrieked as heat scorched her exposed skin, assailing the air with the smell of charred, bubbling flesh. Its acridity seeped in through Kylo's mask, trapping it within until he almost choked. The stench stung his eyes as he fled down the hall he had entered through, hoisting the girl to his shoulder.

She'd passed out from the sense-robbing sear, her limbs and face blistered red, and her signature in the Force began to flicker. Kylo ran as the entire base shuddered around them, heading for the nearest ship hangar rather than pause at a wall terminal for a status report. A warning to leave screamed shrilly behind his temples as the foreboding groan of stressed metal reverberated everywhere.

_What have you done girl?!_ He seethed inwardly. _We're on the eve of victory._ I'm _about to win._

The floor heaved beneath his feet, and he pushed his legs harder, sprinting with his awkward load.

_You WILL give me the map to Skywalker, and I'll make you PAY for this day._

The girl stirred from his shoulder, murmuring almost in protest, as if privy to his thoughts and wanting to refute their bold claims.

Kylo frowned. She was a contentious thorn even while unconscious. Best he cast her from his heel quickly, before she nettled in and infected with her mundane trappings. 

He wouldn't let her mystery ensnare for long.

He just needed that blasted map.


	3. Flight

Kylo Ren typed in the coordinates with a rushed, frustrated punch he had to repeat twice before jumping them to hyperspace. He had maneuvered the ship out of the hangar bay while debris rained down with startling ferocity. The amount of damage and lurching ground fissures made it seem like the entire planet were coming apart, instead of a nonvital subsection of the Ilum-consuming construct, and he only realized the full scale of the girl's sabotage as he'd soared into orbit.

A Resistance fleet was attacking Starkiller Base – one he hadn't sensed approach at all – and had aimed their fire on the opened hole her explosions had rent in the thermal oscillators. The Millennium Falcon was among the throng, adrift beside a rescue frigate, and he felt his father's usual mix of frustration and roguish determination across the star-strewn expanse. The Falcon's scorched underside showed Solo had tried infiltrating the base, but been thwarted by the shields, skimming off them in a harrowing pull Kylo could almost hear Chewbecca roar about.

Han had evidently come for the girl – or the oscillators – after all. 

Too late, and without a true plan, as usual. 

As Kylo checked the cockpit console a final time, he glanced back at the slumped mound who had singlehandedly demolished the shields and bared their inimitable weapon's lone vulnerability. And _he_ had been the one to serve it up, bringing her inside the base.

She was no thorn. The girl was carnage and chaos given big-eyed, bipedal form.

She was still breathing, and Kylo could see now most of her burns were superficial. Part of her filthy tunic and trouser disaster had been blackened, but none of it appeared melted or fused to the skin underneath.

_I'm a goddamn hero_ , he thought mirthlessly. _She'll barely even have a scar._

A violent urge to ensure she bore marks of her heinous crime suddenly swelled, and he stormed towards her.

Almost as if Kylo's thirst for vengeance had been aloud – alerting her to peril in an urgent shake of a shoulder – a great inhale rose her chest, and her eyelids fluttered open.

The girl blinked blearily, and the terror he thought would satisfy only enraged as she caught sight of him. "S-Stay… back…," she rasped. She clawed at the floor, hissing in pain as she groped and flailed in a pitiful scramble, half-dragging herself away.

Kylo bent down, grabbing the front of her shirt and wrenching her up on her knees. She cried out, scrunching her face as her inflamed legs protested the sudden pressure.

Now was the time. She was injured. Weak. She would relinquish the map, and he'd leave her to die wretchedly in a corner.

"Give me Skywalker," he ordered.

Long lashes fell, and her features went suddenly smooth. Kylo felt the Force buckle and swirl within the cockpit. An odd pressure started in his fingers, fighting to open his grip at her collar, and he realized she was doing it, summoning power where her physical strength had failed.

Half-alive, this little junker had enough backbone left to challenge him. In the arena _he_ had mastered.

Such audacity was only outstripped by the depth of her stupidity.

Didn't she know who she was dealing with?


End file.
